Holiday in the Rain

The first poem was inspired by a trip to London I took in 1987. I stayed in a hotel around the corner from Russell Square. Every morning at sunrise, I had coffee at a sandwich bar in Sicilian Avenue, then took a cup "to take away" and went through the smaller Bloomsbury Square to Russell Square and spent a leisurely half hour just strolling.

 

The second poem was inspired by my first summer participating in the American Institute of Musical Studies in Graz, Austria. A group of us students had been told of a wonderful restaurant called Häuserl im Wald (Little House in the Woods), which was indeed in the middle of a heavily wooded park. We set out on foot through the woods and got caught in a rainstorm.

RUSSELL SQUARE

In the slate air
a medieval mist
hovers, mingles
with the steam from
my Styrofoam cup.
I pass benches
that are moist from
night's lingering breath
and take slow steps
round the flower beds,
drawing slender sips
from my cup, savoring
the waking of my limbs.
The pavement
beneath my feet
shudders with a sudden breath
as a lorry passes
unseen.  Beyond
antique roses
the great city stirs.


HÄUSERL IM WALD

With madcap exuberance
we forged ahead, swinging
our tightly furled umbrellas.
Cool drops from
piney clustered limbs
streamed in slim strands
down our hair,
into our collars, and we
chanted like children, giddy,
defiant of the thunder's
grumbled scolding.
Ahead lay the bright promise
of schnitzel and strudel.
Through the gloom
we went ever onward
toward the goal, undaunted
in primal mutual need,
leaving behind us not
a trail of crumbs, but
only the day's details.



© Leticia Austria 2013

The Silent Voice

She pushes on rusted wheels

the sum of her existence

 

furrowed mouth forming

words obscured by

 

hip-hop pounding

from passing cars

 

suits barking business

into bluetooths

 

the laborious sigh

of bus doors shutting

 

 

© Leticia Austria 2011

To Dante and Petrarch

 

 

To Dante and Petrarch

 



Now I understand

and may call you "comrades,"

 

you for whom the earth's one reality

was the thing most unattainable,

 

in which are found the colors,

the language, that can paint

 

the landscape of the heart.

Though a nameless novice,

 

I intuit the clasp of your hands

across the centuries, on the page

 

where you have poured out

your voiceless ardor.

 

 

© Leticia Austria 2007



Of Dreams

L'Invito

Come to me in dreams, since truth denies me;
In night's darkling womb I may feel your breath
Upon my cheek, and for that moment know
What day's unvarnished light will not allow.
Night is kind to those who may never have;
Its brush is forgiving, its canvas wide;
It paints me lying against your shoulder,
And I remain content while sleep accords.
Stay with me, then, belovèd, just this night,
And give sweet respite to my heart's unrest.


After the Dream

With widening dawn
fragments bloom
like passion flowers:

a smile I recall
but never saw,

a voice from your lips,
yet strange and new,

embraces hidden from history
beneath the heavy cloak of sleep.

Dark disperses, light gathers,
morning quickens, fragments fuse and form,
the vista of day's long hours
brightens

as I remember
the you I knew in the night.


© Leticia Austria 2008, 2012

Three Poems for Holy Week

Renunciation

They once were mine,
These hands that played
Upon their shrine
Of ebon, tusk;
These hands that sang
Of heroes' wreaths,
The wreaths of maids,
And maidens' plaints.

Now silent, still,
The fingers weave
A chapel roof
Where slow tears drop
And drop and pool
While prayers sigh
And sigh and moan
Into the nave.

They once were mine,
These chastened wings,
As wings once chaste
Now crimsoned, cracked—
Into those hands,
My Lord, my God,
These I commend
That once were mine.


Simon

I once had all the answers
safely nested away.
I once knew who I was
and the path I was to take.
Why, then, did I pause to look?
Why interrupt the evenness
my life had become,
the status quo that beat
so assuredly in the hollow
where my heart was to have been?
But for my curiosity
the answers would still be mine.
One casual glance erased forever
those easy, formulaic solutions
and chanced to rest on the face
that now gives me no rest.
Streaked and stricken, it haunts me still,
gripping my soul with its
unspeakable pain and sorrow
born of a love I did not then
and cannot now fathom.
Yoked with him beneath the wood
I looked into his eyes,
and all my answers were lost,
forever drowned in that cup where
taking dies and
giving is eternally reborn.
No, it was not my choice.
And he was not my Lord.
But I shouldered his yoke
and trod in his steps,
leaving behind
my tidy nest of answers
and the self I knew
to become forever
His.


An Ecstasy

"No greater love than this."

My love, my love,
the unspoken word
Thou givest me who sought Thee,
I shall clasp within
this inner sanctum,
that my soul be branded
with its Cross, girded
with its diadem of grief.
Clear as the light
upon Thy limbs,
vivid as the blood
upon Thy brow—
with this fleeting, searing,
unspoken word
Thou hast answered me.
My love, my love,
Thy face is veiled
with the shadow
of my unworthiness; still,
I know Thy eyes,
laden with blows of ignorance
and arrogance.  Thy thorns
pierceth me through.
I cannot speak nor move,
but only weep; for,
mutely groaning, Thou turnest
Thy face to leave me
once more alone.

My love, my love, I ask you again
yet know too well I cannot bid you back,
nor would I; but live content that you,
o flame of my soul, warm me still.


© Leticia Austria

Beyond the Screen

     Nowadays, I don't spend a great deal of time outdoors. The neighborhood in which I live is not congenial for walking, neither atmospherically nor from a safety standpoint. However, when I do go out to retrieve the mail or the newspaper, or to take out the garbage, I can't help revelling in the sights, sounds, and scents around me. I note the color of the sky and the arrangement of the clouds. I listen for the familiar ramblings of our neighborhood mockingbirds, the mellow coos of mourning doves, and the sharp chastisements of grackles. A stray cat may be curled up in one of our large round flower tubs, or in the corner of the box beneath our picture window. In spring, I look up to see our purple martins, the ones that nest in our backyard condos, gliding and circling overhead like miniature airplanes. The breeze may carry the sweet perfume of our neighbor's mountain laurel. Those brief moments provide a much needed respite from electric light, the sound of the TV, and the non-human companionship of the computer.

     At least the computer is situated by a large window, and from time to time as I sit clicking and scrolling and typing, there is a welcome distraction in the form of birdsong or a glimpse of a passing cat.

 

 

Beyond the Screen

 

Sometimes when at my desk, facing

the impersonal face of the flat screen,

 

I hear a mockingbird rejoicing in the rose arbor.

My mouse pauses its questing course as I listen

 

to a repertoire of songs gathered from

all the arbors and all the forests of the world.

 

I look beyond the screen and out the window

to see a cardinal perched on the door of my car,

 

grooming herself at the side view mirror.

She is fastidious in her routine.

 

She knows she must be lovely

before flying into the day to chase the sun.

 

Outside my window a cat saunters silkily

across the flower box and onto the sill.

 

When I tap the pane it stops—

seemingly without surprise—raises a paw

 

to touch the glass in solemn blessing,

then saunters on to windows unknown.

 

I turn back to the screen and its

ever-widening net, an infinitely smaller world.

 

 

© Leticia Austria 2012

The Promise

This is a very early poem that I wrote in the monastery and have since very slightly revised.


To surrender in faith is to hope in the dark.
Dark faith it is that first bids us
walk beneath Gethsemane's vigilant leaves
to the brow of Calvary, and there
grasp the hand shattered by our sin, trusting
we shall be carried beyond the weeping stars.

For beyond is where dawn ever gleams
with the joy given to those who trust,
to whom the dark is the way,
in whose hearts echoes the Virgin's fiat
in measure clear and strong.

To surrender in faith is to hope in the dark.
To hope in the dark is to tread toward the light,
the light that is life,
the life that is love,
the love that is Lord.

© Leticia Austria 2006

The Dream

With widening dawn
fragments bloom
like passion flowers:

I smile I recall
but never saw,

a voice from your lips,
yet strange and new,

embraces hidden from history
beneath the heavy cloak of sleep.

Dark disperses as light gathers,
morning quickens, fragments fuse and form;

the vista of day's long hours
brightens
as I remember
the you I knew in the night.

© Leticia Austria 2012

Requiescat (May he rest)

This is another poem that began as a Facebook status. It was inspired by a visit to my father's grave.

Requiescat

In the midst of
military precision decorated
with discreet bouquets,
one grave

near my father's
breaks rank,
boasting
a 3-ft. Christmas tree,

fully decked
(lights included);
the family has
roped off the site

with silver
tinsel garland strung
on giant candy cane poles and
plastic poinsettias

thrust into the ground.
The crowning touch:
mammoth Santa hat stretched
onto the headstone.

My mother and I walk on
to wreathe
my father's name
with holly.

© Leticia Austria 2012